Donald Trump’s Really Strange Poll Numbers

A political data firm called Civis Analytics did some research in an attempt to figure out who would actually vote for Donald Trump and got some very strange results, The New York Times’ Upshot reported. Here are some of the weird insights the geniuses at Civis uncovered:

1. The Donald actually does better in blue states than red ones. Trump got his highest margins of support in New York when over 40% of Republican voters in every congressional district said they would vote for him. Yet he did not do well in some red states. In Kansas, Trump’s support was less than 30% in every congressional district, while in most of Utah, he was backed by less than 20% of voters. In Wyoming, Trump received support from only 26% of Republicans. In Arkansas, Trump received just 18% of the support of Republican voters in the fourth district and a support level of around 29% in the rest of the state.

2. Trump has a hard time getting support from rural Republicans. In the largely rural Seventh Congressional District in Wisconsin, Trump’s support was at 27%, while it was at 32% in Wisconsin District Eight (Green Bay). His support level in North Dakota, one of the nation’s most rural states, was 22%. In the Northeast, Trump did well in heavily urbanized New York State and Pennsylvania but not in bucolic Vermont, where he received just 24% of the vote.

 

3. Trump will be a very hard sell out West. West of the Mississippi, Trump only received a 40% level of support in one congressional district: the Second in Northern Nevada. He polled above 35% in just three congressional districts West of the Mississippi.

 

4. Trump seems to be an East Coast or even a Northeast phenomenon. His support is strongest in Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York State and weakest in the Rocky Mountain West, Texas and the Pacific Coast. The farther you get from New York, the worse Donald does.

 

5. Trump is a bust in Texas. The Donald was only able to get 30% or 31% support in two Texas congressional districts: 19 and six. In some other Texas districts, his level of support was as low as 21%. The reason for this is unclear, but the numbers could reflect Texas’s large Hispanic population, which is not very friendly to Donald, the number of veterans in the state and the high level of Christian voters there.

6. The majority of Republicans oppose Donald Trump. In no congressional district on an interactive map based on Civis’s data did Trump get more than 43% of the support. In most of his good areas, Trump’s support was between 30% and 40%. That means even in the states where he does best, six out of 10 Republicans are opposed to Donald. In most states, the vast majority of Republicans, 70% to 80%, are against Donald.

 

7. The numbers show that it would be nearly be impossible for Donald Trump to get enough votes to win the Republican primaries.

 

8. More Democrats support Trump than Republicans do. Strangely enough, 43% of the people who said that they plan to vote for Trump were registered as Democrats, according to Civis. Only around 29% of the people who supported Trump were registered as Republicans.

9. The majority of Trump supporters have no party affiliation whatsoever. Around 40% of the Trump supporters were unregistered, and 36% were Independents. That means 76% of Trump supporters are not members of either party, which means they are ineligible to vote in many primaries.

 

If this data is correct, Trump will not win the Republican nomination and possibly not win a single primary because most of his support is coming from outside the GOP. It is hard to see how he can win a Republican primary with most of the Republican voters opposed to him.

Another intriguing conclusion we can draw from these numbers is that Donald Trump is not a conservative. Instead, his support seems to be coming from largely centrist voters. That could play against him because the Republicans are a conservative party.

These numbers show us that Trump will lose if conservatives can unite behind one candidate. His success seems to be based on the large number of Republican candidates, some of whom are preaching the same message. If most of the other Republican challengers drop out and conservatives unite behind a credible candidate, Trump will lose the nomination, particularly if that candidate could mobilize support in states like Texas.

Indeed, Trump could be in for a very bad defeat in the primaries, which could make both the Donald and his cheerleading section in the media look very silly. Civis’s numbers show us that Donald’s “success” is based more on media hype than credible political support.